Magnus Edengren Gets His Crowning Moment in $1,500 Mixed Omaha

It only took slightly longer than half an hour to crown a winner in Event #43: $1,500 Mixed: Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better; Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better; Big O (7-Handed) and the first player from Sweden posed for the winner shots this summer here at the 2024 World Series of Poker (WSOP) at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas.

Out of a field of 853 entries, it was Magnus Edengren who defeated James Juvancic and Tim Seidensticker in quick succession as the trio shared the biggest slice of the $1,138,755 prize pool.

Edengren only had five WSOP cashes for $59,649 to his name prior and more than tripled that amount today, as he notched up the top prize of $196,970. Runner-up Seidensticker collected $131,308 for the efforts, and Juvancic walked away with a consolation prize of $91,132. For all three of them, it was the biggest WSOP score by some margin, but only one of them could earn the gold bracelet.

The Swede started playing poker in the early 2000s and competed for around ten years before he pretty much stopped playing. However, some occasional trips to Las Vegas are still part of the routine.

“I haven’t started playing again. I just come to Vegas every year to have fun, and then I play some tournaments,” Edengren said with a big smile on their face before adding, “I don’t really play poker anymore at all. I stopped a long time ago and just play for fun.”

Event #43: $1,500 Mixed Omaha Final Table Results

Edengren’s first three WSOP cashes came in 2013 and 2018, respectively, both in four and five-card split pot game variants, which are the preferred game types for the Swede. He didn’t come close to winning a bracelet back then, even though he finished 19th in Event #40: $2,500 Mixed Big Bet six years ago for a small cash prize of $4,470.

However, not long ago, Edengren made a deep run in Event #24: $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship where he finished in 12th place for $28,891. He also cashed in Event #37: $10,000 Big O Championship for $20,306 and has now been in Las Vegas for two weeks with plans to stay for another week.

“I have not been close to winning a bracelet yet, but this year I have been great. I was 12th in the PLO8 and thirty-something in Big O”.

The different Omaha variants have been his favourite game, as that’s what he specialised in when he started his journey in poker. “I knew all the math, and now I know nothing; I just have fun”. For the Swede, the Cadillac of poker with just two cards is boring, but he would jump into any tournament that has four cards to offer, and some of them are coming up in a few days.

“Just four cards for me; if there are any of those tournaments while I am in Las Vegas, I will play them.”

The more difficult decision appears to be what he will do for the rest of the day, as the unscheduled Day 4 concluded after only half an hour.

“I don’t know, actually; I am in kind of a bubble right now. Maybe I will go watch my friends play poker and have fun,” Edengren concluded before heading to the payout desk.

Action of the Final Day

After a gruelling Day 3 in which the field was reduced from 22 contenders to the final three and all eyes were on eventual fourth-place finisher Phil Hellmuth, the unscheduled extra day was over shortly after it began on the left side feature table in the Horseshoe Event Center.

Edengren started as the chip leader, and with the limits already very high, he applied pressure with his big stack. The first one to suffer was Juvancic, who could not hit a flopped wheel draw and lost a big chunk of his stack. Seidensticker also had to bow to the aggression of Edengren as well with the latter pulling further ahead.

In two Big O hands, it was then all over. Juvancic got it in against Edengren on a nine-eight-seven flop with both holding the flopped jack-high straight and room for further improvement to a higher straight. Running clubs followed, and instead of a likely chop, Jucanvic was left empty-handed while Edengren entered heads-up with a lead of more than five-to-one over Seidensticker.

They got it in soon after on a ten-high flop with two spades, still in the five-card variant, and Seidensticker was ahead with two pair and a queen-high flush draw. Edengren held top pair with a king-high flush draw and instead of spades, he caught a king to make better two pair. No low came in with a deuce on the river, and just like that, a winner was crowned.